Akhnaton, King of Egypt

by Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky

Late at night he got up and sniffed the air with a grimace of disgust. His old illness was upon him again: he was everywhere pursued by bad smells—of dead rats, as in a granary, of bats' dirt as in the tombs, of rotten fish as on the banks of the Nile, where fish is cleaned, salted and dried in the sun. He opened a box at the head of the bed and taking out a gold casket, with white powder in it, sniffed it, put some on his tongue and spat it out. He knew the powder would make him sleep but afterwards sleeplessness would be worse than ever.

He placed the casket back in the box and took out the ring with the carbuncle—Amon's eye. He lifted the stone which turned on a tiny golden hinge and peeped into the cavity underneath, filled with silvery grey powder—the poison. Only a half of it remained, the other he had put into the king's cup at Saakera's feast. Moving the stone into its place he put the ring back into the box.

He went down into the garden and then through a gate in the garden wall into the street, bathed in the white moonlight on one side and black with the shadows of the ruins on the other.

He stooped as he walked with his head bent, treading heavily and leaning on a staff, like a weary pilgrim at the end of a day's journey.

Clouds, fluffy like lambs, with transparent opalescent fleece, tawny-pink and silvery-blue in the moonlight, slowly moved all in one direction as though grazing in the pastures of heaven, with the moon for shepherd. There was stillness in heaven and stillness on earth; nothing stirred, as though bound by the moon's silver chains; only bats flitted to and fro like shuttles in a loom.

Suddenly there came the sound of howling and laughter as though someone, tickled to the point of tears, were both laughing and weeping. It was the howling of hyenas that must have scented Merira. It was followed by the hysterical barking of jackals. The dead city came to life. But gradually they subsided and stillness reigned once more.

Passing a huge piece of waste ground with charred planks and beams—remnants of the king's palace, Merira came to Aton's temple.

Most of the temple had remained. The huge building, with thick walls of well-baked brick and stone, could not be burned and was not easy to demolish. Only wooden rafters in the ceilings had been burned and ceilings and columns had fallen down in places. All bas-reliefs of King Akhnaton sacrificing to the god of the Sun had been broken and hieroglyphic inscriptions painted over or erased. The three hundred and sixty-five alabaster altars, in the seven courts of the temple, had also been destroyed and their place defiled: cartloads of filth had been brought from the Jews' Settlement and flung there, so that for a time the stench took one's breath away. But soon the sun burnt out and cleansed everything, turning filth into black earth; the wind of the desert covered it with sand and what had once been a place of pollution was fragrant with the fresh smell of mint and bitter wormwood.

"Seven courts—seven temples: of Tammuz of Babylon, Attis of the Hittites, Adon of Canaan, Adun of Crete, Mithra of Mitanni, Ashmun of Phoenicia, Zagreus of Thrace. All these gods are the shadow of the One to come," Merira recalled and again he thought drearily: "He is always everywhere, there is no escaping from Him."

Suddenly there was a sound of footsteps. He looked round—there was no one. This happened several times. At last, by the time Merira reached the eighth, the secret temple, where the Holy of Holies had been, he saw in the distance a man who was running from moonlight into the shadow. He knew people were robbed and murdered in the city at night; he remembered he had no weapons; he stopped and wanted to shout "who goes there?" but felt such an aversion from his own voice that he said nothing and went into the temple.